Joseph Addison
FameRank: 8

"Joseph Addison" was an English essayist, poet, playwright, and politician. He was the eldest son of The Reverend Lancelot Addison. His name is usually remembered alongside that of his long-standing friend, Richard Steele, with whom he founded The Spectator (1711)/The Spectator magazine.

If you enjoy these quotes, be sure to check out other famous writers! More Joseph Addison on Wikipedia.

A misery is not to be measured from the nature of the evil, but from the temper of the sufferer.

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.

True happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy to pomp and noise; it arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self, and in the next from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.

If men would consider not so much wherein they differ, as wherein they agree, there would be far less of uncharitableness and angry feeling.

Education is a companion which no misfortune can depress, no crime can destroy, no enemy can alienate,no despotism can enslave. At home, a friend, abroad, an introduction, in solitude a solace and in society an ornament.It chastens vice, it guides virtue, it gives at once grace and government to genius. Without it, what is man? A splendid slave, a reasoning savage.

Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains, losses and disappointments; but let us have patience and we soon shall see them in their proper figures.

To be exempt from the passions with which others are tormented, is the only pleasing solitude.

I think I may define taste to be that faculty of the soul which discerns the beauties of an author with pleasure, and the imperfections with dislike.

Self discipline is that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another.

What an absurd thing it is to pass over all the valuable parts of a man, and fix our attention on his infirmities.

How beautiful is death, when earn'd by virtue! Who would not be that youth? What pity is it That we can die but once to serve our country!

He who would pass his declining years with honor and comfort, should, when young, consider that he may one day become old, and remember when he is old, that he has once been young.

All well-regulated families set apart an hour every morning for tea and bread and butter.

I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.

Man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter.

Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joys, and dividing our grief.

Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter. In love to our wives there is desire; to our sons, ambition; but to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express.

The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love and something to hope for.

Content thyself to be obscurely good. When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, the post of honor is a private station.

Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.

If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother and hope your guardian genius.

Arguments out of a pretty mouth are unanswerable.

From social intercourse are derived some of the highest enjoyments of life; where there is a free interchange of sentiments the mind acquires new ideas, and by frequent exercise of its powers, the understanding gains fresh vigor.

To be an atheist requires an infinitely greater measure of faith than to receive all the great truths which atheism would deny.

Exercise ferments the humors, casts them into their proper channels, throws off redundancies, and helps nature in those secret distributions, without which the body cannot subsist in its vigor, nor the soul act with cheerfulness.

There is nothing that makes its way more directly into the soul than beauty.

Laughter, while it lasts, slackens and unbraces the mind, weakens the faculties, and causes a kind of remissness and dissolution in all the powers of the soul.

It is folly for an eminent person to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected by it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age, have passed through this fiery persecution. There is no defense against reproach but obscurity; it is a kind of concomitant to greatness, as satires and invectives were an essential part of a Roman triumph.

What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but, scattered along life's pathway, the good they do is inconceivable.

Sweet are the slumbers of the virtuous man.

A good conscience is to the soul what health is to the body; it preserves constant ease and serenity within us; and more than countervails all the calamities and afflictions which can befall us from without.

The friendships of the world are oft confederacies in vice, or leagues of pleasures.

True happiness... arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self.

Ridicule is generally made use of to laugh men out of virtue and good sense, by attacking everything praiseworthy in human life.

Our imagination loves to be filled with an object or to grasp at anything that is too big for it's capacity. We are flung into a pleasing astonishment at such unbounded views and feel a delightful stillness and amazement in the soul at the apprehension of them.